Of course, with Charlene around, nothing is as simple as one would think it should be.  We walked out to an open area and Brad lay down in the grass.  I followed suit with my head on his stomach to serve as a pillow.  As Charlene tried to find her spot, she found herself lying halfway into a depression in the dirt.  We hadn't noticed it before because it was dark and we weren't really paying attention anyway.  Charlene was not comfortable, and though Brad and I found it quite entertaining, we decided to relocate.  Charlene chose a nice spot under the branches of an oak tree and lay down, only to find herself lying on an acorn.  Once again, Brad and I laughed, but Charlene wasnt amused.  Finally we got situated, my head on Brad's stomach, Charlene's head on mine.  We relaxed and identified various constellations.  My favorite, Cassiopeia, was visible, as was Charlene's, the Big Dipper.  Brad's favorite, Orion's Belt, was somewhere over the horizon.  It was while we were stargazing, talking and laughing that we got the scare of a lifetime. 

Looking up at the sky through the tree branches, there was no movement.  All was still.  Without warning, something flew out of the tree.  Charlene gasped, Brad jumped, and I gasped and jumped.  Our hearts were racing- all because a bird went out for a midnight snack.  There were brief exclamations of "what was that?" and "holy cow!".  All was again still, and in the silence each of us could hear our hearts beating in our ears.  Again, we decided to move to another spot.  Finding one far away from holes, acorns and birds, we settled down.  This is where we started acting rather adolescent.  Watching the sky, we discussed the events of the day, the food, and the speakers we'd heard.  One of us noticed an airplane traveling slowly across the sky and jokingly asked, "Whats that?"  One of us commented, "Its a bird, its a plane, its..."  "a flying monkey!" another interjected.  All of us were laughing, which was really annoying for Charlene and I, considering we each had our heads on someone else's stomach.

Finally, exhausted from the day, and with sore cheeks from laughing so hard, we settled down, silently staring at the expanse of star-studded darkness stretched above us.  It was there I found myself thinking about my future: graduation, college, career, marriage, and kids, though not necessarily in that order.  It was then my eyes caught a visual meteor appearing as a temporary streak of light in the night sky, better known as a shooting star.  Charlene was the first to say what Brad and I were about to say, "Did you see that?"  We all did.  I got to thinking more about that great expanse of sky- the tiny piece of the universe visible from my spot on the grass somewhere on a little blue dot we call earth, revolving around a relatively small star.  Completely aware of the insignificance of myself, I thought more about my future, amazed by the proposition that one person can change the world.  My perspective changed, I saw a world that, suddenly, seems like a very big place.